Queens Together
by ChevalierTialys
Summary: They fell together. They found each other, and then they flew together. A story of Susan and the White Witch after the fall of Narnia. Warning for violence and sexual content.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This story contains violence and sexual content. The first chapter is as bad as it will get in terms of gore, because of the trauma Susan has just endured. You have been warned!_

* * *

She's wearing lipstick and nylons the day they make her identify the bodies.

She's wearing them because she does not _know._ She never heard her brother denounce her; never saw the way the Lion's eyes went dark when he did. All she knows is that here is Peter who was once High King over her, grey and still as the statues in the Witch's garden. Here is Edmund, smiling through the blood crusting his face, surely seeing the loveliest dream behind his white eyes. And here is Lucy, little Lu, Queen Lucy the Valiant, and _oh God_ she hardly looks human with her smile torn in half like that, oh God...!

 _No, no, no, no,_ Susan screams as she spews her breakfast all over the blood-washed tiles and wonders what terrible thing she did to deserve this. _Please, God, no!_

She does not sleep that night, or the night after that. Her mind caves on the third night, and she dreams of her sister.

Lucy stands on a green hill, glowing and innocent the way only a girl of eight can be. At her feet lies Cair Paravel and the sea; winged horses soar where the breeze lifts her golden hair to brush the sunset. And the Lion is coming over the hill as the wildflowers bow to kiss his paws and mane. Susan longs to run to him and bury her face in his warm fur, but serpents spring from the ground and bind her with their writhing tails until she cannot move at all.

"Susan!" Lucy calls as the Lion nuzzles her; as she tumbles naked and unashamed into the grass and lets him lick her sprawling limbs. "Have faith, Susan. One day you will join us, but only if you _believe!_ "

She watches as Aslan, who had borne her on his back and let her chase his tail, opens his great mouth wide and devours her sister. _You were always his favourite, Lu,_ she thinks as bones splinter and organs spill; as his fur grows wet and red. _I always wished I could be you._

Aslan lifts his mouth from the thing that had once been Lucy and roars, gore flying from his teeth until Susan's face is hot with her sister's blood. And then what's left of Lucy is laughing and laughing, and the roar becomes a train which smashes her awake.


	2. Chapter 2

The funeral is a quiet affair. Everyone who should have attended is dead.

Susan stands in a scattering of college friends and relatives as her family is given to the earth. There had been so much to do - assets to distribute and testaments to ponder - and she is so tired that when she looks down at the bare skin between her glove and sleeve, she can almost see the sluggish blood beneath and the ground on the other side. She knows nothing other than that she's fading. The smallest breeze seems enough to break the bonds between the atoms that try so desperately to hold her together.

Her black heels dig graves in the wet soil as she walks away. She does not weep.

Back at the college she exists as a ghost, occupying space that could have been used for something good instead. At night her dreams are filled with darkness and noise. The pulse of a bowstring; the voice of a horn calling her across the sea. Soft paws filled with daggers and a shape crouching in the hot night, but never the golden face she had stroked and kissed once upon a time. The Three Rulers are dead, and Cair Paravel is furnished with their bones. Only the fourth remains, bound and naked for evil things to slither over her skin, screaming _no, Aslan, help, please, I'll do anything, NO!_

"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. My last confession was eight years ago."

The sins of Susan Pevensie are heavy, and the priest's heart aches for the pale lost woman-child kneeling before him. Still, he prays with her and assigns her penance, and smiles when she promises to be good.

She does try. She trades lipstick and nylons for matronly dresses that hide her collarbones and ankles. She finds more and more occasions to pray each day. No more books that don't belong in a women's college. The girl she had kissed in the courtyard lays a land on her shoulder, and is told never to speak to her again. No more touching; no more filthy feelings. Sometimes she thinks about becoming a nun, but of course no convent would accept someone as rotten as her.

One night, as she dreams of Aslan and Lucy again, she is joined by a stranger. He - or she -stands at a respectful distance, cloaked and hooded in white, doeskin boots barely bending the wildflowers. The stranger watches as Susan is stripped naked and showered with her sister's blood, and as she screams herself awake, she catches a glimpse of eyes the colour of night.

The next time she dreams, the stranger shrugs off her hood. Susan stares at the black hair and pale slender limbs, wondering where she had seen them before. But she receives no answer, for the stranger does nothing but watch politely. In the curve of her blood-red mouth lies the curiosity of a child pulling the wings off a butterfly, only this particular butterfly is tearing her own wings.

On the third night, the stranger speaks.

"Susan," she says, her voice deep and ancient as a hunting-horn. "There is no shame in what you are."

The air tastes of battle. Centaurs lie before her, man and horse torn asunder. A faun with flies crawling over his kindly old eyes. Winged horses broken by their fall, red and white mingling where arrows pierced them. A fox, a badger and two beavers scattered around the body of a lion. Its head lies a few feet away, where the thief must have dropped it upon realising what the lion was not.

"Susan," repeats the stranger, and suddenly she _knows._

"Get away from me!" she screams, animal bones crunching beneath her feet as she runs. "You're _dead_ , I saw Aslan kill you, _get away!_ " Blood-slick flowers wrap around her ankles and she falls. The White Witch appears beside her. There are tears in her midnight eyes.

"Susan, I only wish to speak..."

"I'm not listening to you!" Susan pushes herself backwards until she's trapped against the slain lion, its rank fur sticking to her skin. "I've got to be virtuous. I've got to show Aslan that I can be! Get away from me or I'll kill you!"

The Witch sinks to her knees in the mud and gore. Her white skin is the only thing that smells pure; a vision of snow and sky with pines carrying deep green shadows in their branches enters Susan's mind. She shakes her head and forces herself to look at the lion, counting the flies that feast in the stump of its neck. _I must be pure, I must be strong, I must resist!_

"Sweetling, I know how much you abhor killing."

"I'll do it!" she shouts, even though her bow lies broken in a castle of bones. "I'll strangle you with my bare hands if I have to!"

"I only wish to speak." The Witch steps out of her furs, revealing tight-fitting robes of crimson and gold. "See? I have no weapon. If I wanted to harm you, you would not be here to answer me."

"You're a liar!" Susan's arm sweeps over the carnage. "You did all of this, and I won't let you tempt me! Go on, kill me so that I can be free. I'll have died virtuous. And I'll walk with Peter, Edmund, Lu and Aslan, and we'll laugh at you, you pitiful beast!"

"Susan," says the witch quietly. "Do you not see that Aslan has abandoned you?"

"That's not true!" Susan digs her nails into the flesh of her arm until it bleeds but it's not enough, nothing but the Witch can rouse her now. "It was me who abandoned Aslan! I stopped believing, and..."

"Did every one of these creatures, every old man and innocent child whose blood has watered this meadow, also stop believing?" The Witch's eyes flash; a phantom wind lifts her hair to wrap around her limbs like the tendrils of some horror from the sea. "Do you not see what you have become, Susan daughter of Eve? A little girl when you should have been a woman, snivelling and begging for death! Aslan has abandoned you just as he has abandoned this battle, because a cat always grows tired of his toys! And when a cat knows that every one of his toys has enough power to crush him into nothing, he tears them apart as he has torn you!"

"You're lying." The battlefield glitters behind a veil of tears. "Aslan is the most powerful of all. Nobody can match him, and certainly not you!"

The Witch's fingers are cold against Susan's cheek.

"Answer me this, little Daughter," Her breath freezes Susan's tears, turning her skin to diamonds. "If Aslan is as powerful as you say, why am I still here?

* * *

"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. My last confession was two weeks ago."

"Do not do this thing that you have planned, my daughter." The priest is young, and his voice is pleading; afraid. "Those who do are forever damned to the fires of Hell."

Susan promises not to entertain such thoughts any longer.

Susan lies.

On this night, she will not dream. She waits until she hears the rhythmic sleep-breath of her roommates, wondering if she ought to say goodbye. No, if she's going to be so selfish, she has to think of them in this at least. She dresses quickly in the dark, having snuck out of the college a hundred times before, and takes with her a thermos flask filled with cold water.

There had been some use to those old sinful ways after all, she thinks bitterly.

The night air is hot against her covered skin, making her long for the days of short skirts and nylons as she drifts among puddles of light. There is a bridge in a park where nobody goes except for her and the boys she had wanted to kiss once. She makes for that bridge, and there she hides wrapped in her own shadow, watching as the waters fracture the lamplight into a thousand glittering pieces and counting the muddy wavelets that lap at the shore.

Susan Pevensie takes the bottle of pills from her handbag, and swallows until the river rushes her to sleep.


End file.
